Ripples Unbound
by Shilara
Summary: After following Sam, strange things start to happen and Cassie finds herself face to face with her worst nightmare! R&R!


Ripples Unbound

"No! This is not happen…Oh, God, this can't be real, this has to be a dream, please, let me wake up!" Staring horrified at the scene below me, one clammy hand plastered to my mouth to stifle that treacherous scream, I think that I must have died and gone straight to Hell. The blackened walls and unnaturally still bodies littering the floor underneath me made my whole body tremble with revulsion and terror. Visions of what must have occurred in the Gate Room in order to cause such destruction dance before my eyes like obscene phantoms from the pit of my darkest nightmares, but before they can consume me completely, I notice something very wrong with the scene, something that has nothing do with the fact that everyone I have ever met at the SGC appears to have been murdered by some unknown force.

From my viewpoint, I could see that only half of the room had been destroyed, although the battle looks as though it should have blown the entire place to kingdom-come. Then I notice something else. The side closest to me shows no disturbance at all, but a few steps after that, the structure looks as if a bomb or something had decided to go off without warning. It almost looks as though there is a barrier….some kind of spatial anomaly or something…. hovering between them….in fact…

I almost unhook the hinges holding the grate to drop down and investigate, but something stops me. As the daughter of the CMO, I had seen plenty of carnage, and knew damn well that half of the accidents that brought someone into the infirmary were caused by some over-enthusiastic dumbass who'd touched or messed with a seemingly innocent object. "Okay, Cass, rule number one--never, ever walk into some alien energy barrier without a weapon." Somehow, the idea of snatching one off a body did not appeal to me. Instead, I slowly shimmied back the way I'd come, dropped down into the hall again, and made a beeline for the weapons locker on level C. Three denied and one accepted access-codes later, I was back, this time armed with a zat gun and other standard equipment. I hadn't taken too much, because I still had to fit into that air vent in order to re-enter the silent Gate Room, but I had enough so that if something--only God knew what--decided to surprise me, I'd be more than ready.

Back inside that incredibly claustrophobic tunnel, I made my slow and arduous way to the Gate Room grate. Once there, I had to figure out how to get the mesh cover off the space. One solid kick with my regulation boots solved that problem, and I slithered down out of the hole with only one or two catches.

Once more I dropped down into an instinctive crouch, checking my initial impulse to run to everyone lying on the ground at once. Forcing myself to take a few breaths, I crept cautiously to the first prone form, and realized, to my horror, that I recognized that mop of golden hair. It was Sam. With trembling fingers I touched what I truly expected to be cold and unfeeling flesh, but to my amazement, the thin layer of skin covering the side of her next pulsated! She was alive! Quickly and efficiently, my medical persona immediately took hold of the situation, and began flittering around the room, checking the vital signs of each and every person I encountered. Thankfully, they seemed merely unconscious, and as every heart pulsed with a slow yet steady rhythm, I turned my attention to more pressing matters, like the investigation of that shimmering veil for example. As much as I hated leaving them lying there, I knew enough to realize that I could do nothing for my team mates at the moment, and knew that the base itself was at risk every minute that barrier stayed within its walls. I would have to get rid of that first, but in order to do so, I had to figure out what the hell it was. Slowly, with dragging steps, I approached this golden enigma. Firmly planting my feet, I leaned forward, hesitated for a fraction of a second and cautiously rested my fingers against it….or at least, I tried to, but the weird barrier thing had other ideas.

The second my hand touched the shimmering veil, my whole body was jerked forward by some unseen, undeniable force. I was so startled, I lost my footing, and collapsed directly into it! It seemed as though some kind of nuclear explosion had gone off inside my head, because the thing was smacking me down to the ground as if I were nothing more than a three ton steel block. I was hurled out of it with a force that should have knocked me out completely but didn't, and as I lay there, stunned, wheezing, and definitely bruised in more than one place, I concentrated on one thing--breathing. Because my chest felt as if it had been slammed with a boulder twice my size.

After a time, an eternity it seemed, I heard the thunder of footsteps running on concrete, and a second later I was being hauled upright by what was most definitely a highly agitated hand. As I swooned, trying to get my bearings, the hand turned into an arm, which wound around my waist, holding me up, and an outraged, female, and strangely familiar voice demanded, "Who the hell are you?" For some reason, the voice sent me into an almost uncontrollable state of panic, as my body started shaking like an extremely mobile bowl of Jello. I started heaving in my shock, and my stomach muscles cramped, pulling me down, with a tearing force, toward the ground. The one arm turned into two and they locked together in front of my torso, as my newly focused and disbelieving eyes fell on someone I had never thought to see again. For several moments my voice rebelled and I was struck dumb. Finally, I managed to croak, "MOM! But--but you…." Then my mind shut down, and the dark mist I had been fighting earlier surrounded me, and this time I let it, staring into the coffee brown eyes of my deceased mother, all I could think to say was, "How!" But for the moment, it did not matter, for I then saw nothing at all. 


End file.
